Adam Goldberg could be considered the Woody Allen of his generation, having brought neuroses to the screen with greater comedic effect than most other modern actors.

He's expressed his angst-ridden need to dance in Dazed and Confused, made a failed relationship seem all too real in 2 Days in Paris and driven Chandler Bing nuts in a memorable run on Friends.

In the new indie film Untitled, Goldberg plays a classical musician whose postmodern, atonal compositions are far too abstract for most ears. Strangely, he seems to take comfort in the fact that no one understands him. His and other characters' stories work as a subtle parody of the New York art world.

We caught up with Goldberg – who makes his own music in a project called LANDy – on the phone from his LA home last week to talk about his role in Untitled. Hunter Hauk

Q: Your character is unapologetic about his music being inaccessible, while his brother is a visual artist who wants wide acceptance. Where do you lie as a filmmaker and musician?

Goldberg: I struggle with it psychologically, but I don't necessarily do anything about it. So many things are beyond my control that I've tried to stop bothering so much with creating or realizing some notion of what success is. At a certain point I realized that things are the way they are. The acting thing kind of has a life of its own. The things I've done and developed, I guess it can be argued that I could have done more to create calling cards. I just don't know that I'm capable of that. My character in the film is definitely capable of it, but he's more intellectually opposed to the idea of doing something that would be widely accepted.

Q: Even though the film is supposed to be a parody of self-important artists, the music your character is making has merit. What's your impression of the music in the film?

Goldberg: I tried not to judge the quality of it too much, because we weren't physically capable of using the score composer's own recordings in the scenes. So what you see is us trying to re-create it, which isn't quite as good. [Laughs] But there's something in me that gets it. I mean, I've always been a fan of Steve Reich, but there was a time where he used really cheap loop phrasings and hand claps before he finally applied them to something more symphonic. I think that eventually my character would apply his techniques to more harmonic music.

Q: And the Hollywood sucker in me totally wanted that to happen on camera. I wanted to see him bring that all together.

Goldberg: Well, truth of it is, that was in there. No one has asked about it, so I haven't talked about it. But yeah, it was part of the ending. It ended up just being too much, I think.

Q: There's always DVD, right?

Goldberg: Exactly. Some of my best [expletive] is in the bonus features. In general. They should just compile all of my bonus features.

Starring Adam Goldberg. Directed by Jonathan Parker. R. Opens Friday at the Magnolia.

Read more from the Q&A with Adam Goldberg, including his thoughts on his own musical project, his canceled TV series The Unusuals and the roles fans approach him about the most.

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